Originally Posted by
rwanttaja
I think you would have found similar relationships for British and American prisoners in the Wehrmacht and Kriegsmarine (Army and Navy) POW camps. The German Army, Navy, and Air Force were largely led by similar professional military officers. In addition to being punctilious about following regulations (and the Geneva accords were incorporated into their military code) the pre-war officers got to know the officers of their eventual foes pretty well. The navies exchanged port visits and the Air Forces showed off their latest airplanes at international exhibitions. The biography of Robert Tuck (another Stalag Luft III POW) tells a story about how Luftwaffe officers were permitted to crawl all around a Hurricane during a pre-war exhibition, even to the extent of being briefed about how a new refracting gunsight works.
The exception would be the Waffen SS...the military arm of the SS. The officers there were highly politicized, and generally not professionals in the pre-war sense. If you recall the massacre of American prisoners during the Battle of the Bulge, that was an SS unit. After the war, the Allies attempted to prosecute General Peiper, the commanding officer, but his death sentence was commuted due to alleged misconduct by the American investigators. He was eventually released and went to work at Porche.
The issue for the Japanese (who had signed the same Geneva Accords) was cultural. They did not accept that a person could surrender and keep his honor.
Germans vs. Russians was different, too....
Ron Wanttaja